February 15, 2013

Ray Kurzweil, Google Inc.’s director of engineering, took the stage at NASA’s research park at Moffett Field and the crowd fell silent. They’d been waiting all week at Singularity University’s FutureMed conference in Mountain View to hear the storied futurist-inventor-author speak. Finally, the slight, bespectacled Kurzweil launched in, telling the history of Silicon Valley’s role in the exponential advance of innovation in his heavy New York accent.

After the talk, Kurzweil’s fans swept him off the stage, seeking autographs on their copies of his many books. What makes the 66-year-old Queens native a Silicon Valley rock star? [...]

Comments (5)

I may be wrong but I don’t think it’s even close. Nobody has been as accurate as Ray at predicting the future. I think every person of power should read his books, with a preface of all the predictions he has made and there accuracy. Do we need a futurist? With the rate of change happening so fast and it’s excelleration I think we need it more than ever. If I had my way I’d make it required reading in highschool in order to prepare people for the upheavals that are around the corner.

I think, more so then the Singularity, what their needs to be is simply more awareness of the future — people are happy to blithely live life without really giving much thought, and perhaps I’m the same in my own way…perhaps we are all — others will say that it’s impossible to predict the future and name a whole list of reasons.

A whole list of reasons that often work against us – this tendency to consider the future as absolutely unpredictable, or our sheer disinterest in at least trying, is often what results in failing to engage with the world as you otherwise should to get the better results you want; whether an individual, or as big as, well, anything really.

Is methodology important? Obviously, and the failure to have a sound one is often where these bias come from….had more political forecasters been more engaged and employing a more sound methodology, that picks at the salient patterns, they would have been just as successful as Nate Silver in predicting Obama’s victory.

This isn’t rhetoric and fancy-talk – it has real consequences whether something minor or as big as an election….point blank, many people generally don’t care about trying to see into the future, and often when they do, it’s based off of something less-then-perfect, such as their own (adopted) philosophy or methodology that isn’t optimal.

One can argue that I’m making this vastly more terse then it needs to be: indeed, as before, how much you care about the future depends alot on your personality and how you even see it….my whole point is that, as a whole, it would do plenty good for their to be more accurate forecasters in, well, as many aspects of life as possible because they are ultimately what we end up basing our expectations and decisions on….for all the blase-attitude people may have about the future, they truly do think about it…just perhaps not as much or as optimally as they should, and as with the election, it ends up having very real consequences that can be very good, or very bad.

Obviously my post covers and implies at alot of things, but to wrap it up….covering, specifically, major technology trends more as Kurzweil does, would be a fantastic idea in alot of sectors…because ultimately, there is very little that is just as pervasive as technology…a little foresight would only enable good proactive decision-making when they hit the streets and “appear out of nowhere”.

How many real *futurists* are there in the White House (and governments of other nations)?
I understand that it is silly to be too hyped for the Singularity, but not aware of it and preparing for it is equally wrong.

Agreed: more so then the Singularity and what that even means, I think what needs to be taken when it comes to policy-making is Ray’s idea of Exponential Growth…I remember seeing an interview on the Singularity podcast where he was talking about patents that are about as long-lasting as someone’s lifespan…more so then not moving fast enough, a concern could be that policies are based around the intuitive view of the future, which may be an issue.